Insider Tips to Finding the Best Shopping Cart

Finding the best shopping cart software for your particular eCommerce system can be done by paying careful attention to your needs and the features you require, and gaining a greater understanding of what is available by reading the latest shopping cart reviews.

Creating an online eCommerce site can be profitable and rewarding. But often, an Internet entrepreneur may pay careful attention to product mix, web site design, and marketing, only to neglect the most important final element: deploying the best shopping cart.

Finding the best shopping cart is vital from a customer retention perspective. With a poor shopping cart that may be confusing or difficult to follow, a customer will often not take the time to try to figure it out—they will just abandon the order and go elsewhere. As such, the number one rule of e-commerce is: make it easy for your customer to buy from you!

To start out with, familiarize yourself with what is available by reading the many online shopping cart reviews. The best shopping cart will go beyond the simple capability of placing an order and using a credit card. Other features may include built-in cross-sell and up-sell promotions, easy shipping and sales tax calculations, and the ability to allow customers to enter in special promotional codes to receive a discount. In addition a prime shopping cart will incorporate a marketing element, with an autoresponder that will send an email to a buyer as soon as the purchase has been made. The system should also be able to capture email addresses and purchase information to allow you to build a marketing database for future email marketing campaigns.

Something else to consider are the merchant account and payment gateway. The shopping cart itself is just the front-end, which allows the customer to gather the items they want to purchase and calculate the total amount. But it must also integrate with some type of payment gateway that actually takes the money. Make sure your shopping cart integrates with your payment method of choice.

In selecting the best shopping cart for your own situation, the cost is obviously a consideration, especially for new online shops. For those who are putting up a proof-of-concept site, or for those who are putting up an e-commerce site for the first time, one of the free shopping carts that are currently being offered may be a good decision, at least temporarily. This allows you to refine your shop and make sure your concept is good before spending more money on one that is more feature-rich. You may also be able to obtain a shopping cart that suits your needs from your Internet service provider or merchant account provider at a discounted price.

Integration with your existing systems is another important consideration. If you have heavy volume for example, a shopping cart that integrates directly with your inventory control system will be invaluable to you. This type of system will automatically adjust your inventory records to reflect what has been purchased and sent, making it easy for you to know when to place orders for more goods.